Bad Beat - Chapter 48 - Eye (Patreon)

Gabriel felt a bit awkward being held in the rather solid arms of Bombshell as they floated over the ruined street. From this angle, he could see Bombshell’s eyes through the mask and the barely contained desire to murder and destroy.

Still, he wisely kept silent, lest that energy be directed at him.

Glancing to the side, he watched as they floated past a window where a guy was recording him with a grin on his face. He rolled his eyes and watched as the emergency services rolled in, with an escort of police vehicles cutting through the rubble while the sound of sirens filled the air.

Gabriel could barely hold back a scoff. ‘Because of course they arrive just after the supers have left…’ he grumbled inwardly as Bombshell continued to drift through the air.

They watched in awkward silence as the emergency personnel fanned out and began gathering the wounded, while the police walked around, assessing the damage to the local infrastructure. Heavy machinery was already loading debris into the bed of a truck, clearing the road for further repairs.

His phone was continuously buzzing in his pocket while he watched from the corner of his eye as the drone skittered up the wall and vanished toward the roof of the building. At least Sparky knew what to do. Though he knew for certain that the recording of him being thrown around by the villains would be used extensively by the sassy AI to annoy him.

After almost ten minutes of floating, his legs started to go numb, so he hesitantly spoke up. “Err, not that I don’t appreciate the save, but could you let me down?” he asked.

Bombshell’s head snapped toward him. “Oh. You’re still here?”

Gabriel blinked. “Where would I have gone?”

Bombshell visibly thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.

However, instead of letting him down, she looked up and launched into the air, flying higher and higher. Within seconds, they were looking down at the street from higher than the nearest building. Gabriel clung to her as he tried not to think about how high up they were.

She looked at him for a moment, watching him squirm before letting out a chuckle and flying toward the nearest roof.

He felt the wind blow past his ears, but by the time he processed that they were flying far faster than he was comfortable with, Bombshell touched down on the roof of a residential building and let him go.

“Ugh!” he yelped as he fell to the ground, his back hitting the hot and probably dirty roof, driving the air out of his lungs. His ass hurt, but at least he was on solid ground.

More or less.

Bombshell leaned over and looked down at him.

“Hey, hero! You good?” she asked.

Gabriel looked back at her. “What do you think? Two supers just demolished the street I was on, then used me as a tennis ball, before some crazy blonde threw me onto a roof. Do you think I’m good?”

It only occurred to him who he was complaining to when the final words left his mouth, and the realization hit him hard enough that his expression slowly shifted from frustration to horror as his brain finally caught up with what he had just done.

Bombshell stared down at him for a moment, her expression unreadable behind the mask, and Gabriel could practically feel the embarrassment crawling up his neck as he awkwardly raised his hands in front of himself.

“N-not that I don’t appreciate the save,” he quickly added, his voice becoming slightly higher with every word as he tried to salvage the situation. “It was super awesome of you to do that! Really! Thank you.”

Bombshell continued looking at him, her face still unmoved.

Gabriel could feel the embarrassment growing by the second.

“Really,” he broke the silence quickly. “Thank you. It was super awesome!”

For another long second, she simply watched him before the corner of her mouth slowly curled upward.

“Are you done?” she asked.

Gabriel nodded. “… I think so?”

“Good.”

She reached down, grabbed his hand, and with one easy motion pulled him into a standing position. Gabriel couldn’t help but take a step back as he looked down at himself, realizing that most of his body was covered in gray dust, with a few tears here and there thanks to the debris that had cut him up while he was crawling across the ground. He was even lightly bleeding in a few places.

For a moment, he tried to dust himself off, but after only a few half-hearted attempts, he gave up with a sigh.

It was then that Bombshell cleared her throat.

He looked up and tried to smile.

It didn’t work.

“Y-yes?”

His hands quickly found one of his pockets and pulled out the deck, just in case he needed it, or if he could somehow grab a few more cards of tectonic energy.

She looked him over and nodded. Then she let out a sigh, as if the things she was about to say would cause her physical pain. “I’m going to have to ask a few questions…”

“Yes?” Gabriel repeated, worry beginning to crawl through him.

Bombshell just let out another sigh. “Could you tell me what happened? I need it for my report…”

“Oh…”

Bombshell smirked. “What? You thought I was going to ask you out?”

Gabriel let out a small snort. “Anything would be better than a police report.”

“Fair,” Bombshell replied, then motioned for him to start, the unspoken threat clear enough for Gabriel to understand.

“Now start talking.”

Twenty minutes later, Bombshell flew away, leaving Gabriel alone on the roof, bewildered.

He spent the time answering general questions about the situation.

When did it start? Which supers were present? What did they say and do? What did Gabriel do? Did he see anything interesting?

Then, when he finished, she simply gave him another inscrutable look before flying away.

“What the fuck just happened?” Gabriel muttered as he tried to process everything.

‘Why the hell does Bombshell keep finding me?’

He was about to head toward the door leading inside the building when he felt a tug on his shirt. Looking down, he saw the drone, shaped like a metallic spider, staring up at him. He chuckled and reached down to pick it up. The drone transformed back into an inert piece of metal, and he placed it into one of his intact pockets.

Then, with another deep breath, he headed for the door.

Which was locked.

Because of course it was.

He tried a few forceful tugs, but in the end, he had reached his limit for the day. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, and seeing no one nearby, he raised a palm and released a small blast of energy at the lock. The metal shattered enough for him to wrench it open, allowing him to descend the stairs.

He opened the door to his apartment, still covered in dust and grime, only to be met by Mia, who immediately began fussing over him.

“Gabriel! What the hell happened?” she bombarded him with questions the moment the door closed behind him. She rushed forward, and whether she was trying to hug him or check him for wounds, he couldn’t tell. “You went for lunch! How the hell did you end up in the middle of a super fight?”

Looking past her, he saw Nate standing there awkwardly. The other man noticed that Gabriel had seen him and gave a small wave.

“I have no fucking idea…” he admitted, frustration beyond belief evident in his voice. “And I didn’t even get my burgers…”

Mia looked at him worriedly, while Nate smiled. “Don’t worry, I ordered pizza.”

Gabriel sent the other man a glare. “Couldn’t you have warned me? You’re the precog, after all.”

Mia also turned around and placed her hands on her hips. “Well?”

While Nate tried to answer, Gabriel shucked off his shoes. A small clatter echoed as rocks fell out of them.

“I told you already! Gabe shatters my visions! It takes a while to rebuild them after he uses his power,” Nate told her, while sending a weird look at Gabriel. “You really need to stop that, by the way, if you want a warning next time.”

“Sure, I’m going to prepare for ambushes that I don’t know about,” he replied sarcastically. Then he shook his head and took off his jacket and shirt, holding them in his hand. “Now, if you will excuse me, I need a shower.”

He returned to the living room in fresh clothing, his old, dirty ones hidden in a card, right next to one filled with juicy Tectonic Energy. The room was filled with the smell of fresh pizza while Nate sat on the couch and Mia sat on a kitchen chair, pointedly not looking at the precog.

The moment he stepped out of the bathroom, she sprang up, a half-open first aid kit in her hand. She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the chair she had been sitting in.

Then she made him take off his shirt so she could clean his wounds. Gabriel exchanged a look with Nate, who looked back at him with a jealous expression as Mia fussed over him.

Instead of mentioning it, he simply leaned back in the chair and let Mia do her thing.

**

“This is the second time Bombshell has approached you, Gabe-a-roni. Anything you want to tell us?” Nate asked between two bites of pizza.

“I wish I could tell you…” Gabriel admitted. “This entire thing is weird as fuck. She didn’t even ask any weird questions. Just the standard police questions, then took off without a how-do-you-do…”

Mia raised an eyebrow and smirked at him, partially hiding behind the pizza box resting on her lap. “Maybe she has a crush on you, and this is her way of pulling your pigtails?”

Gabriel’s eyes widened, and he looked back at Nate, who was also staring at him. Then, as one, they both shook their heads.

““Nah!””

He waved a hand over himself. “I mean, look at me, and then look at her. I would sooner believe she already knows that I’m a super and is keeping an eye on me than believe she has a crush on me.”

Nate nodded, agreeing with him wholeheartedly. “Bombshell doesn’t do nice. Nor do I think she knows what love is.” He took a bite, swallowed, then continued. “I spent enough time mapping out meetings with her to know she’s the type of gal who strikes first, strikes second, and then kicks them while they’re down just because she can.”

Mia pouted. “Fine. Ruin my shipping…”

Food finished, they sat around the table and stared at each other.

“Right,” Gabriel began. “We should talk about the next target. This whole experimentation thing is starting to worry me.”

Nate puffed up his chest and leaned forward. “Never fear, lovely people! I’m here to tell you that the solution to our current conundrum is here.” Both Mia and Gabriel stared at the precog in silence. Just to be extra, Gabriel reached into his pocket and absorbed a bit of air with one of his cards, then released it, causing Nate to flinch. “By that, I meant that our best option is the laundry.”

“I knew it!” Mia exclaimed, pumping her arms.

“Reason?” Gabriel asked.

Nate nodded. “Glad you asked. The answer is simple: I looked into the future where I tried to break in, and the laundry was the place where they had a gang presence.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I expected…” Gabriel admitted at that explanation.

Mia leaned forward, equal parts excited and fearful. This time, her sister’s identity wasn’t simply that of a victim of a gang. There was a real chance she was an active participant in something horrific. Gabriel didn’t know how she would react when they found out, one way or another.

“Still nothing on the sister front?” he asked Nate.

He shook his head with a frown. “Too far away. Your presence shatters most lines before they can get good.”

“If you stopped talking to me, would that work?”

Nate shook his head. “I felt the effects of your powers when I took a trip up to Sacramento. If that didn’t work, then I doubt just not talking to each other would work.”

Gabriel could hear the pure frustration in his voice.

“Right… any other ideas on how to stop it from happening?”

“Aside from stopping using your power?” Nate asked, a bite in his voice.

“Can’t really do that, mate…” Gabriel replied with a shrug.

“Other than that…” Nate mused. “...you could try to die. That would probably help.”

“Nate!” Mia gasped. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Fine, fine…” Nate backpedaled. “No talk about death. How about we talk about illegal chemical experiments?”

Mia sent him a heated glare. Gabriel lightly tapped the table with his fingers a few times before the two of them could get into an argument. It was always exhausting to listen to them. Honestly, he couldn’t decide whether they really disliked each other, or that was their way of flirting.

“Right. We need to scout the location,” he started. “The city, and especially the district, is very tense, so we have to be careful. One more operation that goes sideways, and I’m afraid a full-on gang war is going to break out…”

When Mia and Nate left to accomplish their parts of the plan, with Nate mostly seeing what he could through his limited future vision and Mia doing her usual sweep across the net to find whatever she could about the laundry and its surroundings, Gabriel leaned back into the chair and waited for the inevitable.

Soon, an almost silently buzzing drone emerged from his room and hovered in front of him. A blue screen was projected.

[Is the parental unit whole and hale?]

[Not that this unit cares.]

[Simply want to know if this unit should consider relocating housing unit.]

“I’m fine, Sparky. You don’t have to worry…” he said with a smile. Her blatant worry was kinda cute.

[This unit is glad.]

[This unit has spent too much time training the parental unit.]

[This unit would rather not waste resources.]

[Hmmpff.]

“Yes. Yes. Thank you for your generosity,” Gabriel said, already feeling lighter after the banter. Sparky’s sparkling personality always helped to lighten his mood. “However, I need you to do something for me.”

[This unit is ready to upload an edited version of the parental unit’s “heroic” fight.]

“What? No!” Gabriel gasped. “Don’t do that.”

[Pity.]

[This unit found the perfect background music.]

“Just… look into Scrapheap and Devil Wind. I want to know why they were fighting,” he told the AI. “This whole thing stinks to high heaven…”